Tim Perdue on GForge & Building SourceForge 147
Steve Mallett writes "I've just posted an interview I did with Tim Perdue, former co-'head honcho' responsible for developing SourceForge. You'll either love it or hate the interview, but it's on his new project GForge, a fork of the previously open source code running SF, while he shares some insight in what seems like a miracle that SourceForge was built at all." Obviously Slashdot's parent runs
SourceForge, so insert whatever mental disclaimer and conspiracy theory you
want here.
Re:It looks like. (Score:2)
Looks like you need new spectacles.. your current ones seem to be on flame ;-)
Not GForce (Score:1)
Which is:
- A driver for a force feedback joystick
- A well know graphic card
--
Stefan
DevCounter [berlios.de]An open, free & independent developer pool
created to help developers find other developers, help, testers and new project members.
Click here for karma whoring...I mean, /.ing (Score:4, Informative)
OSDir.com: The last time I'd seen your name pop up, previous to your new project, was as a head honcho at SourceForge.
Tim: Well, I was only "head honcho" briefly after Tony Guntharp had moved to engineering and before Pat McGovern was brought in as manager. The funny part was, no one told me I was "in charge", until I was doing a presentation to the board of directors and I was introduced as the manager.
Other than those few months, I was lead developer, which also didn't mean a whole lot, since most of the time there were no other developers, and certainly no road map or plan for how SourceForge would progress. I essentially just built out and developed things on an ad-hoc basis as I saw fit. Drew Streib was the other founding developer for the first 9 months or so and he did the same, and we loosely coordinated our activities and criticized each other's code.
OSDir.com: What was it like at the helm of what is one of the biggest open source projects in existence?
"There was no budget - the hardware was literally repo's and rejects from tech support. This was a major irritant later on, when you would hear at company meetings how such-and-such a manager had provided all the budget and support to make this happen."
Tim: It was certainly exciting to see how outrageously successful it had become, and to be in a small group that was building it out. It was all very ad hoc, very loose. It was a lot of fun for the first several months.
After that, there started to be some tension. Drew and Tony had very serious personal conflicts. We all had pretty strong personalities, bull-headed so to speak, and that raised tensions. At the same time as exponential growth was occurring, we didn't have support in terms of staff or budget. Actually we had less staff with the departure of Drew and Tony a few months after launch. So it was Uriah and I trying to keep this monster growing totally by ourselves. I guess Quentin had joined to handle support requests at that time. But it got really, really ugly for Uriah, as he tried to admin and keep all the shoddy hardware running 24x7 by himself. That was really shameful. We sent some seriously nasty messages to upper management, which went completely unanswered and ignored.
At the same time, most every manager in the company was trying to take credit and grab control. At company meetings you would hear how the whole thing was the idea of so-and-so and they supported it from the start. The reality of how SF started was very different, and the official vision for SF was also very different than what we wound up with. Probably only the founding team remembers know how SF really started and what the original management vision was.
OSDir.com: What was that original vision?
Tim: The real goal of SourceForge was to build a site aimed at IT managers. Believe it or not, that was the real goal. Nobody working there, except Uriah and Larry Augustin, knows that. Everyone else has been fired or quit.
"My main interest is turning this into a client that you can detach and take with you."
Around August of 1999, VA had received back a report on "name recognition" from dataquest or something, and no one knew who VA Linux was, and so no one would buy VA hardware. So SourceForge was going to be a site where every IT manager in the world would come and get information, statistics, surveys, ratings, all that sort of stuff, on open source software and see the VA logo. The hosting of projects was sort of an underpinning to that.
Anyway, the management wanted this whole thing built out by Comdex in November - 2 or 3 months away at that point. There was no way that could happen, so Tony went to bat with management and they agreed to split it into 2 phases. Phase I was project hosting, which we could slap together by Comdex, and Phase II was the IT manager stuff, by February LinuxWorld in 2000.
So the original gang of four was shut in a small private office in SunnyVale and we just started whipping up this system. There was no plan. We just winged it. If we thought of something cool, we slapped it together and that was it. There was no budget - the hardware was literally repo's and rejects from tech support. This was a major irritant later on, when you would hear at company meetings how such-and-such a manager had provided all the budget and support to make this happen.
Anyway, Phase I was such a hit that management never again mentioned Phase II after the Comdex launch.
Shortly after the launch, you started hearing about "Server51" from Andover, which we viewed as a direct ripoff of SourceForge. To counterattack that, we were told by management to release the SourceCode right away, even though it was obviously crap that was hard-coded to run on SF.net.
It was at this time that VA's latest strategy was to distance themselves from Linux - the lustre was fading on that buzzword. Now VA was an Open Source company. They gave MySQL a couple million to GPL their code, we gave away our code, and so did Slashdot. I really expected that the company was going to change its name to something around "open source", which was quickly becoming a better buzzword than Linux. It was really VA management that started the open sourcing of the code.
"...why shut off a valuable open source tool, when you aren't going to wind up with a viable business. And today, SourceForge Onsite has less revenue than your average gas station."
The concept of shrink-wrapped SourceForge software didn't come about until someone from IBM or HP casually mentioned that it would be cool to bring SourceForge inside their company to manage projects.
OSDir.com: How did you part (from SF)? Was it on good terms?
Tim: A little bit of background. As the rest of the company imploded, we had a lot of those people come over and all of a sudden they cast themselves as the "experts" on everything from building a great development platform to running the development process. And of course, I didn't know shit from shinola, which I always found rather amazing since I built much of what they were fighting over.
What ultimately caused me to leave was getting called on the carpet about a post I made in the alexandria-developer discussion forum. A lot of people were wondering why the CVS tree was unavailable, when was the tarball getting released, etc. And in response, one of the new managers posted a response to the forum which was... less than frank. Mind you, it was my name attached to the happenings around the SF code, and I think everyone in this community of users knew me by name, so I did not appreciate the handling of this. It would have been far better to simply be frank and open with what was going on.
Internally, we all knew the code was closing and the entire company was being reorganized around the proprietary code. Practically everyone I knew had just been fired, and what was left was all the managers that were desperately clawing for a seat on SourceForge as everything else just disappeared around them. I'd say this was far bleaker than a year earlier when Uriah and I were desperately trying to hold SourceForge together with duct tape and bailing wire, and I had had enough.
Anyway, they weren't able to sell any of the paid installations while the code was out there, but the management was maintaining a facade that the code was coming,and that's what they said on the message board. It was a lie. I found that intolerable and I posted a list of places that people could obtain the latest code (various forks on the internet, like debian-sf, sfportable, and sf-genericinst). Well, I got yelled at and I literally said 'Farewell' right there on the spot. The manager in question was headed out for a weeklong vacation and told me to think about it while he was gone, but I decided a few hours later. And that was it.
OSDir.com: How do you feel about the closing of the alexandria code base by VA and subsequent projects that built on the still open source, but older, versions?
Tim: I had mixed feelings. I certainly understood that VA was "tiptoeing in the graveyard" as the CIO, Steve Westmoreland, told me. They were pretty desperate for a strategy after the hardware business imploded, and they were convinced they could build a business around SourceForge as a shrink-wrapped product.
But at the same time, I didn't think it was a good idea to close it, mainly because I didn't believe they were going to have any success selling the proprietary product anyway. So why shut off a valuable open source tool, when you aren't going to wind up with a viable business. And today, SourceForge Onsite has less revenue than your average gas station.
OSDir.com: So now the "valuable open source tool" is back in action in the form of GForge. Tell us what GForge is about. How much is it philosophicallyand practicality motivated?
Tim: I agree philosophically with the Debian-SF team that this is a fundamentally valuable tool for organizing and streamlining development, whether it's open source, or whether it's internally at companies. That's why I'm working closely with Debian-SF to ensure that we share a common codebase as things move forward. If developers can crank out more and better code based on what we're doing, that's something we can be proud of.
At the time that I had left VA Linux, I was aware of downloaded/free copies of SouceForge running at the biggest of the big companies, from GE, Sony, IBM, Xerox, and Intel to others I can't remember anymore. IBM DeveloperWorks even runs part of their main website on old SF code, and so does the Free Software Foundation. So the open source code is having a huge impact. Someone really needed to pick it up, and after a year of trying to get others to take up the slack, I finally did it myself.
OSDir.com: Have you had people approach you at all to work on a new version of the SourceForge code?
Tim: Yes, and interestingly enough, many of them are old haunts of VA.
OSDir.com: Have they approached you about building a new SourceForge-like site?
Tim: Well, I'm not interested in putting up a generic project hosting site myself, but there's some serious interest out there in either doing that, or in funding a rewrite of the entire codebase so it is distributed. I've put some thought into how you could restructure this whole thing so it is sort of like gnutella or freenet.
That's a big rewrite, but I do know there are a couple people willing to throw some cash at that and more people willing to code it.
OSDir.com: What kind of improvements have you incorporated into GForge?
Tim: There's not a whole lot in GForge 3 that wasn't in 2.61, aside from a lot of cleaning up and removing hacks that made it harder to install. Part of the "Open Source Strategy" for a while, was that we would make SF really hard to install, to encourage people to buy the commercial product. As a result, it was a real ***** to install.
"A single machine is sufficient. There's not much load involved for a small number of people. You could probably run 1,000 or more people on a single machine given how scalable this thing is."
OSDir.com: Ouch. Well it certainly was, ahem, difficult to install. The previous version of OSDir.com used the code. Notice it's no longer the case.
Tim: The most obvious change to the user is going to be the tabbed theme. This is something I kept trying to do with the official SourceForge, but could never get buy-in on it. Jabber support is almost complete, foundries have been removed, and as I mentioned, it's a lot easier to install. Tons of extra code which was needed for the ultra-scalability of SF.net, is no longer necessary.
OSDir.com: Ah classic. Is this the "Perfection is achieved now when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing left to take away." thing?
Tim: Hehehe, well it is kind of funny that my first instinct was to tear out things that irritated me for a long time, like the foundries. But there is a lot that can/should be added, and a lot that still needs to be rewritten to make it "cleaner" and more maintainable.
OSDir.com: What kind of features do you see being added that may have been hampered previously by other concerns?
Tim: My main interest is turning this into a client that you can detach and take with you.
OSDir.com: How does that work?
Tim: Think of it more like CVS for bugs, tasks, etc. You can copy it to a local machine and check it back in if you made any changes.
This was something Drew and I first talked about 1-2 months after the original SF launch, and a lot of groundwork was laid in the codebase to do it. But it was never realistic given the difficulty in keeping the site running from day-to-day. There were also concerns at that time that you wouldn't be able to show any ad banners, etc, so you really wanted them to visit the web site.
GForge also needs a "real" project manager - the current task manager is pretty weak. The forthcoming project manager will be based on the tracker, sort of a superset of tracker functions with calendaring and resource management added in for kicks. So when a bug is submitted, or a patch, you can easily spin that into a task, and join lots of bugs together into a task in the project manager. It needs gantt and pert charting too.
OSDir.com: Do you think you'll be able to muster the same kind of developer support and enthusiasm for this product as there was for developing the code under the SourceForge brand? Realistically, would that be an enviable thing?
Tim: There is some hope that by having this out there, it applies pressure to VA to open their codebase again. If so, then everyone wins. Aside from that, I can see there is enough interest already to make good use of the code, and I have already received a ton of code back from the debian-sf crew.
OSDir.com: What has the debian-sf crew been able to contribute?
Tim: They have replaced most of the strings on the site using the internationalization support that we built into the code, but never really used. So they've got complete translations in English, French, Spanish and Korean. And of course, a really slick and easy installation process.
OSDir.com: You've indicated that GForge is at Version 3.0 Is it ready to roll for anyone who wanted to set it up right now and take on some projects?
Tim: Yes, although we're currently on the pre4 release. Pre5 will complete the jabber support in a couple of days, and the final release in a couple of weeks will roll in all of the debian-sf changes.
OSDir.com: How much hardware in involved in using GForge today for say 1-25 projects?
Tim: A single machine is sufficient. There's not much load involved for a small number of people. You could probably run 1,000 or more people on a single machine given how scalable this thing is.
OSDir.com: How many folks have deployed GForge to date?
Tim: I don't know that, but there have been about 1,000 downloads so far, and I've heard from a lot of people who have installed it successfully and were happy with how easy and fast it was to install compared to old versions.
OSDir.com: What kind of feedback are you hearing from your adoring fans regarding GForge?
Tim: People are excited. I'm particularly surprised how much energy there is among the ex-VA employee crowd. Tony Guntharp, who was the original manager of SF, is offering to pitch in some interesting stuff he has written. Michael Jennings is working on an RPM installer. We've got an internal corporate user offering to pitch in ClearCase and Synchronicity support. There's a lot going on. I'm pretty impressed.
OSDir.com: Is there anything else, Tim, that you'd like to add regarding GForge?
Tim: Only that if you have time and energy, we could use your help rewriting portions of the codebase. There are a handful of old, crusty sections which have never been "upgraded" over time, and that would be a huge help.
Other than that, if you need to manage multiple development projects, try out the code and see if it helps.
OSDir.com: One last question. What does the "G" in Gforge stand for?
Tim: GNU I suppose.
Is this serious? Who is this guy? (Score:1)
But I guess that's why they didn't want to put him in the public light much. ;-)
Also, I think there's part of the sourceforge.net discussion thread for the source closing that I think is what he talks about in the interview here. [sourceforge.net]
Re:Is this serious? Who is this guy? (Score:2)
Re:A little conspiracy goes a long way (Score:1)
Fun, but Unlikely (Score:2)
OSDir isn't owned by O'Reilly. It is a member of the O'Reilly Network [oreilly.com], but it's Steve Mallet's baby. Steve has been thinking about SourceForge [advogato.org] for over a year. (13 months, today, according to the link).
WTF? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Already???? Well, no offence to Tim, but it's got some way to go before it's SourceForge scale ;)
I can't see the interview either - maybe something is up with my connection...
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Re:WTF? (Score:1)
Lets all give our collective apology for
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
Before it got /.-ed, Tim had posted something to the effect that "Ripped out lots of hacks and ugly code, as GForge doesn't need to scale to 500,000 users".
GForge is meant more for people to use internally and has some very cool (planned) features that I'm looking forward to (and looking forward to helping out with, if I can), such as:
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent's parent? (Score:1, Funny)
Gforge (Score:4, Informative)
I am looking forward to trying this out.
Re:Gforge (Score:3, Informative)
Alright... (Score:3, Funny)
That makes them Slashdot's grandparent. Dont they teach you those things at school anymore?
Server51 not a ripoff. (Score:5, Insightful)
Chrisd
I cowrote Server51, competition yes, ripoff well.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I cowrote Server51, competition yes, ripoff wel (Score:1)
fucking tim... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:fucking tim... (Score:1)
A little full of ourselves aren't we?
Re:fucking tim... (Score:1)
Re:[ This Is Great News for Managers ] (Score:1)
This article is about Tim and GForge....and the interview makes it pretty obvious why you shouldn't rely on SourceForge, or VA for that matter.
"I'm Tim Perdue, and (Score:4, Funny)
Sourceforget (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sourceforget (Score:2)
Re:Sourceforget (Score:2)
Searching on google, I see that "sourceforget.net" is a common typo.
Re:Sourceforget (Score:2)
Re:Sourceforget (Score:5, Informative)
Myself, Tim Perdue, Drew Streib, Uriah Welcome
We also got tons of help from the following people:
Quentin Cregan, Steve Westmoreland, Chris DiBona, Joe Arruda, Jeff Ritter, Patrick Wong, Neil Doane, Robert Flemming and Kit Cosper.
Re:Sourceforget (Score:1)
Re:Sourceforget (Score:2, Informative)
I was close to the action from practically the beginning until VA and I parted ways last August. Those 4 are still some of the most amazing, versatile, talented people I ever encountered in the workplace.
BTW, Tony, you forgot to mention Usman Farman (ibr0w) and Geoff Herteg,
zeruch
Re:That's not what you said back in Feb, when you (Score:2)
offtopic I know but... (Score:1, Funny)
CmdTaco should not be posting stories he should be mixing the milk & honey and making little commander tacos, or is that what cowboyneal is doing?
GPL-comatible php3 instead of php4? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GPL-comatible php3 instead of php4? (Score:2)
If you think it's worth it, just write a GPL-compliant processor for PHP which can run all the PHP code out there already - no one is stopping you (or anyone) from doing that. But for heaven's sake PLEASE don't try to revive PHP3 as a development platform for anything.
Re:GPL-comatible php3 instead of php4? (Score:3)
Don't (Score:2)
I know there was a group at one time that was forking PHP3 to arrive at a GPL'd PHP4 engine, but AFAIK they never got very far. It certainly isn't particularly important at this point, IMHO.
Why Sourceforge sucks ! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why Sourceforge sucks ! (Score:1)
Re:Why Sourceforge sucks ! (Score:2)
I use Sourceforge for CVS, file releases and mailing lists. Recently we decided (at the project I run) to turn off forums altogether, they were just too damn annoying. The bug tracker might be useful, I suppose, but nobody seems to use it, they prefer to post to mailing lists and I can't really blame them. (IMHO a decent bug tracker needs to have a mail interface of some kind - but then no banner ads, urk...)
(My suggestion for the single best improvement to Sourceforge: add fsh [lysator.liu.se] support to the CVS servers so you can do CVS operations without making and tearing down a new ssh connection each time. (Fsh makes a single ssh connection and then keeps it open for subsequent commands). That would really speed up development over a modem, at least if like me you have an obsession with typing 'cvs -q update -Pd' every few minutes.)
one hell of an interview (Score:2, Funny)
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Re:one hell of an interview (Score:2)
Re:one hell of an interview (Score:2)
Same reason you don't see many Mac/Linux viruses.
Re:Paying for sourceforge? Raise your hand. (Score:2, Interesting)
We downloaded the last snapshot of what was to become SourceForge v2.6, fixed it, enhanced it (still are, in fact), deployed it, servicing over 700 people, and kept it alive for over 300 continous days with no interruptions.
Cost? One engineer 3/4 time and a small rackmount server attached to a bunch of filers.
Oh, and we got Unicode working so that we can engage our Japanese and Chinese business partners in their native languages. Sanskrit anyone?
Great stuff, this! We look forward to contributing back to GForge and taking advantage of the fun things they appear ready to deliver.
Re:Paying for sourceforge? Raise your hand. (Score:1)
What are filers? NAS boxes?
J
Re:Paying for sourceforge? Raise your hand. (Score:1)
What are filers? NAS boxes?
J
Yes, NAS boxes.
I really hoped this would not be posted (Score:5, Funny)
May the ddos against osdir continue...
Re:I really hoped this would not be posted (Score:1)
So such oragnisations can get something out ??? (Score:2, Interesting)
The CEO/owner wanted to develop something, only to change the target every second week.
And since the project has some targetting problems, obtaining the hardware was of course a pain in ...
I learned what I could learn, then went out.
I guess that when such an organisation is successfull as producing software, it's because the developper have a really good idea, and they are left alone by the various PHB.
Re:So such oragnisations can get something out ??? (Score:1)
you worked at was VA circa 1999-2001.
--Kit
Re:So such oragnisations can get something out ??? (Score:1)
--Kit
I'll only join Gforge if (Score:1)
Drop doot deetee!
Re:I'll only join Gforge if (Score:1)
Savannah: Another free SourceForge fork (Score:3, Informative)
The interview link is down right now, so please forgive me if this is already discussed there.
Re:Savannah: Another free SourceForge fork (Score:1)
does anyone know if he and the savannah peeps are working together on this?
Re:Savannah: Another free SourceForge fork (Score:2)
Hovercraft (Score:1, Informative)
http://hovercraft.mozdev.org/
Why is VA not releasing code? (Score:3, Interesting)
>Since VA has not released the source in over one year, despite their promises to the contrary, a fork was necessary to ensure a viable open source version of the codebase.
>
so i went over to the site in question (sourceforge.net) and was unable to determine anything about the software which is used to run SF.
So... does Tim have a legit beef? I do not know the history of SF.net enough to know. Is the sf.net code open? Is it VA or OSDN owned? Is it proprietary?
just curious.
It just seemed out of the norm since they've been pretty good about slashcode and all....
Re:Why is VA not releasing code? (Score:3, Informative)
basically, here's the deal
but, quite a few copies of SF2.6.1 (the last tagged CVS release) made it out the door before things imploded, and some folks took it up and ran with it
VA promised to release SF "2.7" in August of 2002, which has come and gone with not so much as a peep from VA
tim (or roland, or anyone really), kindly correct me if i'm off on these points, but this is how i understand the situation
How does Savannah fit in all this (Score:1)
I'm just wondering, how does Savannah [gnu.org] fit in all this?
Re:How does Savannah fit in all this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is VA not releasing code? (Score:2)
The SourceForge stuff on the other hand stopped being released right about the time they went from being VA Linux to VA Software. They appear to have come to this understanding that you can't make money selling Linux, so they looked at their successful SourceForge project and decided they could sell that as a development solution.
But you can't very well sell something you are giving away for free, so they stopped offering it for free under the GPL.
Does Tim have a legit beef? I don't know, perhaps. But I also think the VA shareholders would have a legit beef if VA didn't do whatever they had to do to become profitable. The GPL is all nice and dandy until it comes to the reality of putting food on the table.
Except VA never sold Linux... (Score:2)
After that they tried selling Source Forge, and running OSDN (slashdot and a handful of other sites). I'm pretty sure SF isn't doing very well, and who knows about OSDN.
Red Hat, on the other hand, which basically sells shrink-wrapped Linux distros and offers support on setting up Linux in business is doing fine, and is actually profitable (last I heard).
Re:Why is VA not releasing code? (Score:1)
Re:Why is VA not releasing code? (Score:2)
The former probably generates close to zero revenue, and mostly by promoting the image of VA, OSDN and Slashdot. The latter generates alot of revenue (Slashdot ads generate a huge portion of the VA revenue. I don't know how much exactly. ).
Re:Why is VA not releasing code? (Score:1)
Revenue
- Cost of revenue
------------------
Gross margin
-operating costs
------------------
profit (or loss)
just because something generates revenue, doesn't mean it can generate profit. things that are expensive to provide have a low gross margin, and make it hard to be profitable.
selling open source software is a near-zero-margin business. you can't possibly cover salaries and things. that's why all the "open source" companies are tiny consultancies selling hours (not software, really), or sell proprietary plug-ins, like Covalent, the apache people.
selling advertising on slashdot can generate lots of revenue dollars, but there are huge costs of revenue from paying the bandwidth and the staff and everything. as a whole, the online advertising industry is almost impossible to succeed in unless you're incredibly large and already have other publications to leverage your overhead against, the way that AOL/TW does, and even then it's tough to make money in a recession, because advertising spending is the first thing companies cut.
Re:Why is VA not releasing code? (Score:1)
VA doesn't make money off of the book [oreilly.com]. Now krow [slashdot.org] has talked about offering Slash hosting and custom Slash consulting, but I'm not sure he has the time to do much with it. It's probably not a big enough market to sustain VA resources, either.
Sharp Launched their SourceForge Today (Score:5, Interesting)
Sharp Zaurus SourceForge site at (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Sharp Zaurus SourceForge site at (Score:2)
(second time's a charm)
K5 article on this topic... (Score:2)
Website down (Score:1)
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leftovers (Score:2, Funny)
What a ride! (Score:2)
Cheers!
Re:What a ride! (Score:1)
no longer /.d - Steve Mallett (Score:1)
Sorry I was out.
SourceForge historical note: Cold Storage. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:SourceForge historical note: Cold Storage. (Score:1)
Man I'm tired.
me
GForge Installer built by Debian-SF (Score:3, Funny)
OSDir.com: What has the debian-sf crew been able to contribute?
Tim: They have replaced most of the strings on the site using the internationalization support that we built into the code, but never really used. So they've got complete translations in English, French, Spanish and Korean. And of course, a really slick and easy installation process.
Does anyone else find this extremely funny?
Re:GForge Installer built by Debian-SF (Score:1)
Does anyone else find this extremely funny? :)
Well, now that you ask: Yes.
One of the things we did was build a functional Makefile on top of the std. RedHat v7.2 distro and the available RPMs.
Would anyone like to know how long it takes us to clone entirely new instances of fully functional ready to use in all it's glory SourceForge v2.6 (with all the goodies corrected and fixed up)?
Uh, Taco... (Score:2)
Seriously though, this probably is the clearest possible evidence that VA is a truly f'd company. Who in tarnation is going to buy the commercial SF when this is available?
According to yahoo financials [yahoo.com], VA lost more in the last year than they have in cash. They now have $25 million in the bank and 144 employees.
I give them 8 months tops.
Re:Uh, Taco... (Score:1)
Re:Uh, Taco... (Score:2)
> Oh - and the system you posted your note is paid for by VA Software. How much do you pay to post here????
Yet another reason why they won't be around much longer.
Not that I'm rooting for their demise, but it's now starting to look inevitable. MAYBE they can pull it off, but they'll need further staff cuts. Agreed that some enterprises will want the features you mention, but 1) they'll need to pay a lot to support VA's 120+ employees, and 2) the bugfixes and enterprise features will eventually get into GForge.
You conspiracy theorist... (Score:1)
GForge is also a graphics utility (Score:1)
Conspiracy Theory (Score:1)
SF for commercial projects? (Score:1)
Last Post! (Score:1)
(2) Great generals are forewarned.
(3) Forewarned is forearmed.
(4) Four is an even number.
(5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
(6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
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